The grid is a snug place to stay.
The app grid, I imply: the rows and rows of app icons in your iPhone’s homescreen. It’s acquainted. Safe. It’s how I’ve lived with my varied telephones over the previous decade. But in some unspecified time in the future, it began to really feel oppressive.
All these icons watching me within the face, vying for my consideration. The muddle! The distracting little notification badges! The grid was an affordable approach to set up apps once I had like, ten of them. There are sixty on the iPhone I’m utilizing now, and I set it up from scratch a couple of months in the past.
Naturally, residing off-grid or in a non-traditional homescreen association has been potential for for much longer on Android. Google’s OS permits you to hold your display screen clear and simply discover your apps within the app drawer, which is all the time a swipe away. You may even substitute the launcher totally. But iOS — the place each new app you obtain winds up in your homescreen by default — hasn’t precisely made it simple to desert the grid.
That began to alter when iOS 14 added widgets, an app library, and the flexibility to cover apps out of your homescreen — although I haven’t developed the muscle reminiscence to make use of it a lot. Now, iOS 18 provides much more flexibility. You can put apps and widgets anyplace you need in your homescreen, change their colours, and put extra capabilities into the Control Center. But even because the apps and customization choices have multiplied, most of us are nonetheless utilizing our homescreens in mainly the identical approach as we did with our first smartphones.
With the brand new choices in iOS 18 — and getting a peek at different peoples’ well-curated homescreens — I made a decision it was time to do some cleanup. Why ought to an app I solely open as soon as a month once I park downtown take up area on my homescreen year-round? Better but, does any app should occupy that treasured actual property?
I spent about an hour deleting icons, arranging widgets, and including controls to create my new homescreen. The digital camera management button on the iPhone 16 renders that icon pointless; the motion button launches the oft-used daycare app, so that would go too. When I used to be finished, my haphazardly maintained system of folders with cute emoji labels was whittled down to only 4 apps within the dock and a handful of widgets unfold throughout two pages, which I’m affectionately calling “Windows Phone 2.0.”
Was it scary? A little bit. But you recognize what? I don’t miss these rows of icons in any respect. Nine out of ten instances the app I’m in search of is within the Siri recommended apps that pop up once I open search. If not, I kind within the first few letters of the app identify and there it’s. You might swipe over to the app library, I assume, however I infrequently do.
The greatest downside is that I’ll see a notification, dismiss it, after which neglect about it for days for the reason that app icon and its little crimson notification badge aren’t in my face anymore. But I missed issues right here and there even once I was residing on the grid, and people badges are an actual downside for me: I’m the form of one who wants to succeed in badge zero, so I’ll continuously open apps simply to filter out the notifications and get the crimson dot out of my face. Living off the app grid removes this distraction, and it’s the primary factor I respect about my new way of life.
I’m pleased with my new homescreen, however a few of my colleagues take the off-the-grid philosophy to the following stage. Weekend information editor Wes Davis might educate a masterclass in purposeful iOS homescreens. He retains a couple of apps within the dock, and Wordle will get a spot on his grid, however outdoors of that it’s simply widgets and shortcuts.
“I hate in search of issues on my cellphone,” he advised me. “All of this sort of began with me leaping on the bandwagon of ‘I wish to use my cellphone much less, and have it’s much less distracting.” The grayscale shortcut icons on his homescreen minimize down on visible muddle, and he doesn’t really feel as drawn to opening time-suck apps like TikTok when the icon isn’t proper in entrance of him. Many of the shortcuts additionally comprise drop-down menus, so he can launch proper into the duty he’s in search of.
Best of all, this methodology permits him to arrange his cellphone by the motion he’s attempting to take. An icon labeled “Podcasts” launches no matter podcast app he’s utilizing in the mean time. If he ever begins utilizing a unique app, he’ll hold the identical shortcut icon and have it launch a brand new app. “I don’t need to put a brand new app in there and get myself used to in search of that icon.”
“I attempt to hold it to only these seven apps.”
News editor Jay Peters takes a extra simple method. Like me, he finds the fixed presence of app icons distracting. “If I don’t see the app proper on my homescreen I’m approach much less seemingly to make use of it and simply scroll with it.” He has a complete of seven apps on his homescreen — together with three within the dock — and can sometimes permit an app icon again onto the grid if he’s going to be utilizing it rather a lot in a brief time frame. “If I’m occurring a giant street journey or one thing, possibly I’ll transfer the maps app [at the top of the homescreen],” he says, “But in any other case I attempt to hold it to only these seven apps.”
Both of my colleagues have achieved a stage of stability of their digital lives that I love. I additionally heard from many extra who stated that they nonetheless preserve a homescreen full of app icons, however they nearly all the time skip the grid and go to Spotlight search when they should open an app. And none of us is aware of fairly when it occurred, however a couple of particular person I talked to agreed that the Siri recommended apps on the high of the search pane obtained actually good in some unspecified time in the future prior to now. More typically than not, the app I’m in search of is correct there earlier than I even kind a letter into the search bar.
You don’t have to attend for AI or the metaverse or no matter to make your digital life much less annoying
That form of factor provides me hope for a future the place personalised AI may help me discover what I’m in search of on my cellphone, with much less enter from me. But if I’ve discovered something from this train, it’s that you just don’t have to attend for AI or the metaverse or ambient computing or no matter to make your digital life much less annoying. There are instruments in our arms already; you simply want a bit braveness to go away your consolation zone behind.
